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Coalitions & Partner Organizations

Movement Relationships, Coalitions, and Partners

CLDC exists to provide legal support for progressive movements that are doing cutting edge – even controversial – work challenging corporate/State power and authoritarianism. Unlike regular law firms, or even other public interest legal organizations, we only provide mission-aligned legal support for movements that share our own values. These relationships are very important to us, and we carefully select partners and clients to ensure that we are putting our energy where it is most needed and most effective.

Line 3 Legal Support: Pipeline Legal Action Network

CLDC is providing both direct representation for 15 activists (and is ready to take on up to 40 additional defendants), as well as broader coordination for the Pipeline Legal Action Network (PLAN) and the 900+ people who have been arrested while defending these sacred lands. These cases include a rapidly growing number of felony charges stemming from the state’s Orwellian critical infrastructure law and new felony “theft” charges (temporary dispossession of pipeline construction equipment) conceived of by the fossil fuel industry and implemented through the State’s flagrant collaboration with corporate interests.

National Lawyers Guild

One of our longest-standing organizational partners is the National Lawyers Guild. CLDC senior staff attorneys Lauren Regan and Marianne Dugan co-facilitate the Cascadia Chapter of the NLG, which supports legal observers in Eugene-Springfield, Corvallis, and southern Oregon. This year, as mobilizations for Black lives were met with yet another overwhelming wave of police brutality, requests for legal observers skyrocketed. CLDC and Cascadia NLG deployed legal observers to more than 20 local actions, provided support for other local chapters, and our executive director, who also serves on the National Mass Defense Steering Committee, trained more than 550 new legal observers throughout the country.

Protect the Protest (PtP)Protect the Protest coalition logo

The Protect the Protest (PtP) coalition is another core partner. Comprised of more than 60 nonprofits across the country, and with a motto of “An attack on one is an attack on all,” PtP seeks to preserve our First Amendment right to protest by taking on corporate bullies who use strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) to silence their critics. Lauren directs the PtP Legal Working Group. The coalition also provides important media and campaign support for the SLAPP litigation CLDC is currently leading, and for the activists and organizations targeted by SLAPP bullies.

Protect Dissent

Protect Dissent is a national watchdog coalition with a mission to stop legislative and regulatory assaults on our civil rights. During the past couple of years, many state legislatures have advanced dozens of bills to criminalize dissent with harsh sentences and other penalties — especially for protests — challenging the fossil fuel industry and violence against the Palestinian people. And even as some states moved to pass moderate police “reform” bills to address the seemingly never-ending racial violence of the police state, others doubled down on racist criminal punishment systems. Marianne Dugan, Senior Staff Attorney, leads CLDC’s engagement with this group.

Other Partners

Additional core CLDC partners include Promise to Protect, the Water Protector Legal Collective, Law for Black Lives, Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC), and our own member organizations — both large and small — that increase our capacity and provide reciprocal support for the shared objective of strengthening and emboldening progressive social change movements.